Links of the day

Carlos Ghosn To Cease Heading Nissan's N. American Operations..."In an attempt to address worse-than-expected sales, Nissan Motor Co. CEO Carlos Ghosn will no longer control the company's North American operations"...makes sense since he's been running two car companies simultaneously for a while(Renault)...even the most energetic person is going to get burned out by that kind of pace...

Amgen Shares Continue To Plummet..."Here’s a look at Amgen’s stock with the earnings-per-share line in gold. The two lines are scaled at 25-to-1 (when the lines cross, the P/E ratio is exactly 25):"
My question is why the disconnect in the two trends; theoretically the share price should be following the EPS number. According to Motley Fool author Brian Lawler "There have been some recent negative developments for two of Amgen's top compounds." That might be the reason. But Lawler says that "at current share price levels, investors practicing a long-term buy and hold strategy have a slam dunk on their hands with shares of the company, once it scales back its enormous amount of R&D spending and new products start to bring in meaningful sales." Needless to say, there is plenty of risk in getting new products through the approval process...

Mark McQueen at SeekingAlpha posted this handy list:

Top U.S. Subprime Mortgage Lenders

Rank/Lender/Location/Q4 2006 originations, in U.S. billions

1 HSBC Finance (HSBC) Prospect Heights, IL $12.3
2 New Century Financial (NEWC.PK) Irvine, CA $12.2
3 Countrywide Financial Calabasas, CA $10.1
4 WMC Mortgage (GE) Burbank, CA $9.0
5 First Franklin (Merrill Lynch) (ML) San Jose, CA $7.8
6 Wells Fargo (WFC) Home Mortgage San Francisco, CA $7.4
7 Option One (H&R Block) (HRB) Irvine, CA $6.1
8 Fremont Investment & Loan* Santa Monica, CA (FMT) $6.0
9 Washington Mutual* ((WM) Seattle, WA $5.7
10 CitiFinancial (Citigroup) (C)* Baltimore, MD $5.0